1. Known Issues

1. Installation on 2 or more DASDs (either ECKD and FBA) on z/VM is not supported in the installer script (setup-alpine) at the moment. If you want to install/extend on more than 1 DASD, see "Extending LVM volume". However, installation on 2 or more virtio (SCSI) disks on KVM are supported just like other architectures.

2. The boot media

For KVM, both ISO image and netboot media (kernel and initramfs) are supported.

For z/VM, netboot media is supported.

For LPAR, netboot media is supported. See "LPAR" for more information.

On "Host File Name" box, enter alpine znetboot (the file will be in z/VM console)

Note: Beware the difference between the dot . and the space characters in the file names.

Choose Send to host

Choose Host is VM/CMS

Choose either Fixed or Variable for Record Format

Enter a number for LRECL and BLKSIZE, respectively

Note: Any line in alpine.znetboot that has more 80 chars (columns) will be splitted into more than 1 line when uploaded to z/VM (CMS) console via 3270. Count the number of characters/column of the longest line in your alpine.znetboot and fill it in LRECL. There is no restriction for BLKSIZE but 80 is preferred.

Click Transfer File box

Repeat the same steps with znetboot.exec and curl.rexx files.

(Optional) Check the configuration files

On 3270 client, enter following commands to check if the configuration files are correctly transferred:

xedit alpine znetboot

xedit znetboot exec

xedit curl rex

or filel and put xedit on CMD column to edit respective file.

Start ZNETBOOT

On 3270 client, type below command and wait till Figure 3.:

Figure 3.

znetboot alpine

4. Installation

If you install on z/VM, steps in this part does not involve the interaction with the 3270 client anymore. Everything is done in the terminal with SSH client.

If you install on KVM, you can either SSH into the installer (below) or directly use the console starting qemu.

Either installing in KVM or z/VM environments, from your workstation/laptop, you will be able to run:

Remaining steps are similar to installing Alpine on other architectures (x86, arm, ppc, etc.), either on KVM (using virtio/SCSI disks) or on z/VM with FBA DASDs. Installing on ECKD DASDs requires an additional step, as described below.

Example

Below is the detailed walkthrough of installing Alpine on a single ECKD DASD using LVM and extend that LVM to the second ECKD DASD.

After SSH-ing into the Alpine installer, run:

# setup-alpine

Select keyboard layout [none]:

press Enter for none

Enter system hostname (short form, e.g. 'foo') [localhost]:

enter your hostname

Available interfaces are: eth0.
Enter '?' for help on bridges, bonding and vlans.
Which one do you want to initialize? (or '?' or 'done') [eth0]: